We apply duality rotations and complex transformations to the Schwarzschild metric to obtain wormhole geometries with two asymptotically flat regions connected by a throat. In the simplest case these are the well-known wormholes supported by phantom scalar field. Further duality rotations remove the scalar field to yield less well known vacuum metrics of the oblate Zipoy–Voorhees–Weyl class, which describe ring wormholes. The ring encircles the wormhole throat and can have any radius, whereas its tension is always negative and should be less than $-c^4/4G$. If the tension reaches the maximal value, the geometry becomes exactly flat, but the topology remains non-trivial and corresponds to two copies of Minkowski space glued together along the disk encircled by the ring. The geodesics are straight lines, and those which traverse the ring get to the other universe. The ring therefore literally produces a hole in space. Such wormholes could perhaps be created by negative energies concentrated in toroidal volumes, for example by vacuum fluctuations.

We present explicit solutions of the time-symmetric initial value constraints, expressed in terms of freely specifiable harmonic functions for examples of supergravity theories, which emerge as effective theories of compactified string theory. These results are a prerequisite for the study of the time-evolution of topologically non-trivial initial data for supergravity theories, thus generalising the “Geometrodynamics” program of Einstein-Maxwell theory to that of supergravity theories. Specifically, we focus on examples of multiple electric Maxwell and scalar fields, and analyse the initial data problem for the general Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theory both with one and two Maxwell fields, and the STU model. The solutions are given in terms of up to eight arbitrary harmonic functions in the STU model. As a by-product, in order compare our results with known static solutions, the metric in isotropic coordinates and all the sources of the non-extremal black holes are expressed entirely in terms of harmonic functions. We also comment on generalizations to time-nonsymmetric initial data and their relation to cosmological solutions of gauged so-called fake supergravities with positive cosmological constant.

External magnetic fields can probe the composite structure of black holes in string theory. With this motivation we study magnetised four-charge black holes in the STU model, a consistent truncation of maximally supersymmetric supergravity with four types of electromagnetic fields. We employ solution generating techniques to obtain Melvin backgrounds, and black holes in these backgrounds. For an initially electrically charged static black hole immersed in magnetic fields, we calculate the resultant angular momenta and analyse their global structure. Examples are given for which the ergoregion does not extend to infinity. We calculate magnetic moments and gyromagnetic ratios via Larmor’s formula. Our results are consistent with earlier special cases. A scaling limit and associated subtracted geometry in a single surviving magnetic field is shown to lift to AdS ₃ × S ². Magnetizing magnetically charged black holes give static solutions with conical singularities representing strings or struts holding the black holes against magnetic forces. In some cases it is possible to balance these magnetic forces.

Electromagnetism in spacetime can be treated in terms of an analogue linear dielectric medium. In this paper, we discuss the gravitational analogue of the linear magnetoelectric effect, which can be found in multiferroic materials. While this is known to occur for metrics with non-zero mixed components, we show how it depends on the choice of spatial formalism for the electromagnetic fields, including differences in tensor weight, and also on the choice of coordinate chart. This is illustrated for Langevin–Minkowski, four charts of Schwarzschild spacetime, and two charts of pp gravitational waves.